In recent years, to develop alternative energy, photovoltaic technology has made great progress. Due to the beautiful appearance of a thin film solar module, integration of a thin film solar module and architecture has an increasingly wide application prospect. When a thin film solar module is used as an architectural curtain wall, the see-through of the thin film solar module is getting closer attention while focusing on its power output performance. Currently, the function of see-through of a thin film solar module is usually realized by chemical etching and laser patterning. An adhesive tape is used as the mask in chemical etching in the prior arts. Specifically, after depositing the amorphous silicon film, an adhesive tape is stuck to the parts that need etching; then a non-oxidized metal that can resist NaOH etching is deposited on the surface of the amorphous silicon film; finally, the etching is performed with NaOH solution to realize see-through after the adhesive tape is removed.
However, the above technical solutions at least have the following problems:
Placing an adhesive tape in a vacuum chamber will cause contamination, greatly affects the quality of the as-deposited films and increases the possibility of short circuit of the see-through thin film solar module;
In the circumstance of hot alkali solution, the alkali solution will penetrate into the part covered by the adhesive tape; as a result, the protected area and the etched area cannot be accurately defined, or even the electrical performance of the whole see-through thin film solar module will be greatly lowered;
Sticking and removing the adhesive tape are not practical for manufacturing efficient large-area modules in a large scale.
If laser patterning is used, since the current laser equipments usually use circular light spots, the laser energy is not evenly distributed in the middle portion and the periphery of the light spot; then the scribed thickness will be uneven; the undesirable periphery effect will affect the electrical performance of the thin film solar module.